A couple of weeks ago, friends invited us to The Naam in Kits for lunch. Opened in 1969, The Naam is Vancouver’s oldest vegetarian restaurant, and it has changed barely an iota since then. I remember a boyfriend taking my fifteen-year-old self there on a date, and we had to sit at a communal table. The food was old-school vegetarian, and I had the limited palate of a teenager, so I hated the food and the experience and was a little miffed that he hadn’t just taken me to The Old Spaghetti Factory or The Keg like a normal boyfriend.

My palate has expanded over the last fifty-odd years though, and we had a delicious meal, including a shared order of their Honey Fried Tofu. The tofu was a little disappointing, however, because it had little sauce and therefore little taste. I loved the concept though, so I decided to attempt my own. I found a recipe for the perfect honey-soy sauce, which I adapted. I then made some crispy tofu, but when the sauce kind of slid off the tofu, I realized it was not the best vehicle. I then realized that my shredded chickwheat would be the perfect vehicle and made another attempt.

It was PERFECTION! I served it with some fried rice I’d made the night before–what a delicious dinner!

Vegan Honey-Soy Chick’n

First, make the sauce! Whisk together the following in a sauce pan over medium heat:

• 1 cup water
• ⅓ cup soy sauce
• ⅓ cup honey
• 3 Tbsp sambal oelek
• 1 Tbsp minced garlic (I use jarlic)

When the sauce starts simmering, make a slurry of…

• 2 Tbsp corn starch
• 2 Tbsp cold water

and stir into the sauce. Let simmer until the sauce thickens.

While the sauce simmers, shred…

• 1 lb. chickwheat (or a package of soaked and squeezed soy curls)

and saute in a lightly oiled pan until lighly browned.

Next, add the shreds (or curls) to the saucepan, along with…

• 1 cup cashews
• 3 sliced green onions

Make sure everything is mixed and heated through and serve it up over rice or ramen noodles or with some fried rice (like I did!) and top with…

• Sesame seeds

Now go make this right now!!

As an aside, I think soy curls would work just as well as seitan, but I had a little seitan roast in the freezer and thought I’d use that.

I tend to make four little one-pound chickwheat “roasts” at a time and freeze them to have on hand. The process takes about fifty minutes (and that includes fifteen minutes of resting the dough and eight minutes of kneading it in the stand mixer), so not a particularly onerous or time-consuming task. The steaming in the Instant Pot takes a couple of hours, but you can just walk away at that point and come back to this!

And the song of the day is Bruce Cockburn’s 1979 song, “Wondering Where the Lions Are,” because Spotify informs me that he’s coming to Vancouver on Friday, so I’ve been listening to him for the past couple of days.